Image: Archi Banal

SocietyMarch 18, 2023

I am a full-time Twitch streamer – this is what I do

Guest Post

Image: Archi Banal

Lifelong gamer Karvey now has her dream job, but says there are still huge challenges for women in the industry.

All week on The Spinoff we are delving into our relationship with the world of work in Aotearoa. For more Work Week stories, click here.

When people ask me what I do for a job, I tell them I’m a full time content creator and Twitch streamer from New Zealand. I livestream on Twitch every single night and I provide entertainment for my viewers by playing games, chatting, doing advice streams or just talking about topics and trending things that are going on to make sure that they’re entertained.

I’ve been gaming since I was little, starting out on a Nintendo 64. My mum raised me on her own and likes to joke that I’ve had a controller in my hand since I was one. When I moved to Australia at about 17, I was working as a bartender full time and I didn’t have many friends. I would just come home, play games and go to bed. It was quite hard to find gaming friends, but then I had a work colleague show me this girl who was playing Fortnite live on Twitch and talking to all these people all over the world.

I started streaming the next week, playing Fortnite for a tiny audience. You don’t really need too much to start streaming – just the internet, a console, and something so people can hear you or see you. My first ever viewer was somebody from America. After four years, he’s now become one of my closest friends, which is really nice. Every day there are people from all over the world that are watching me, from Hungary to Bali to Cuba. More recently, I’ve branched out from Fortnite to play more Battle Royales, first person shooter games, even horror games.

About two years ago, I left bartending to make Twitch my full time job. That was during the Covid lockdowns, when everyone was bored and chilling at home. It was really a good time for growth on Twitch and a lot of streamers were able to go full time. I’m all for it – if you can make a living off of your favourite thing, then go for it. I don’t get paid a salary, or even paid hourly by Twitch. You get paid through ad revenue, or through subscribers who can choose to pay $10 a month. You also can get paid through tips and donations and custom emotes.

I get paid based on if people liked me, or if they enjoyed the content. The harder I work and the more I make people happy, the more I’ll get paid. That’s why if I feel anything less than like 70% I won’t stream because I don’t like to project negativity – I want my viewers to feel happy and positive when they come in.

On a regular work day I wake up around 2pm – still enough time for normal people store opening hours and stuff like that. I’ll have breakfast, try and get some exercise and some sun. And then I’ll come back inside, have some lunch, do my emails and get lost in some editing for a few hours. After that, I’ll have dinner and then get ready to stream at around 10pm for five or six hours. Those are the best hours for my viewers – I have late night Kiwis who are just hopping into bed, it’s dinner time in Australia, and then America and UK, they’re all just waking up.

After my stream finishes, it’ll be like four or five AM. I might pull out some funny clips from my stream, title it, edit it, and go to bed around seven or eight o’clock in the morning. My job is hard to explain to people who don’t get it, especially older generations. It’s like I’m breaking the “rules” and “traditions” by earning a living by doing what I love without even leaving the house. One of the other biggest misconceptions as a woman in gaming is that your job is to just sit there and look pretty and get paid, which is what makes it hard for so many females to get taken seriously.

I don’t know one woman on the internet who hasn’t suffered from online trolling, bullying or harassment. I really like to uplift the girls in the gaming community and just show people that half of these girls are better than these men in tournaments anyways. But still, it always gets abusive and sexist with the whole “make me a sandwich” thing or just guys saying “you don’t belong in the game”. You hear about the harassment coming into real life, so you’ve always just got to make sure you aren’t sharing photos with an addressed letter or a license plate in it.

I feel blessed that I have total creative freedom in my job and can express myself however I want at work, but the biggest negative of this industry is how hard it still is for women. The community is definitely becoming more receptive to female streamers, and it’s awesome to be a part of that, but we need to keep calling people out for harassment. I’ve grown a thicker skin over the years and I’m learning not to take these nasty comments to heart, but we need to help others experiencing it feel less alone or less targeted. Leave us gamer girls alone.

– As told to Alex Casey

Keep going!

Design: Archi Banal.

KaiMarch 17, 2023

I am a KFC worker – this is what I do

Guest Writer

Guest Post

Design: Archi Banal.

What it’s like working as a cook for the world’s biggest fried chicken chain.

All week on The Spinoff we are delving into our relationship with the world of work in Aotearoa. For more Work Week stories, click here.

Everybody loves fried chicken. OK, not everybody, but a significant chunk of the New Zealand population does. To many of us, fried chicken is a comfort food. To others, it’s part of their ethnicity’s food culture, and to some, it is simply a tasty treat. When lots of us think about fried chicken, our minds naturally drift towards KFC; after all, the brand has become synonymous with fried chicken in the English-speaking world. It’s the world’s biggest fried chicken fast food chain, with almost 27,000 locations doing $31.3b in sales in 2021 alone.

Here in New Zealand, we have 114 KFCs spanning Kaitaia to Invercargill and everywhere in between. The sight of Colonel Sanders’ mug and the KFC bucket are easily recognisable to plenty of us, but how many people know what goes on behind that bucket? I work as a cook at KFC, so I can answer that question.

As well as working at KFC I am still in high school – with all the sports training, homework and assignments that come with it. Typically I work late nights since I’m at school during the day. When I wake up on a workday I always have a sense of despair about how long and tiring my day will be – I’m going to be out from 8:30am – 11:30pm.

Getting home so late from work means I can’t do my homework until almost midnight, forcing me to stay up well past a reasonable school-night bedtime (not that I go to bed early usually anyway, but at least it’s my choice when I’m not working). Not only does this make me extremely tired at school the next day, but I am often stressed out trying to balance paid and school work.

The man, the myth, the legend, Colonel Sanders. (Photo: Bob Grannis/Getty Images)

As a cook, stress seeps into my day when the KFC store I work at is understaffed. Frequently my workplace does not have enough people to allocate to each station – ordering, packing, sending out food and cooking. Cooking itself is split into two sections, breading (aka coating the chicken) and frying/cooking. Sometimes we’re forced to work more than one station at a time when we’re short staffed.

Working more than one role at once is really rough. Doing both cooking stations when we’re understaffed means it’s really difficult to get people’s orders out, particularly keeping the “chicken warmer” (sounds gross, and it is) stocked. Particularly when we’re understaffed and/or busy, I must cook the chicken well in advance to beat the rush. The chicken sometimes sits in the warmer for up to one-and-a-half hours depending on what piece it is.

When I’m at work, nothing great ever happens that gets me excited, although there are plenty of lows. As already mentioned, working alone in the kitchen when it’s busy is really difficult, and sometimes we even run out of chicken! But the worst thing about working at KFC is the cleanup.

Cleaning the kitchen includes scrubbing, washing and rinsing down work surfaces, filtering flour and draining the vats of oil used to deep fry the chicken. The latter is very difficult and has given me several bad oil burns. To do it best requires a helping hand, so it is especially tough when we are understaffed.

The humble New Zealand KFC (Photo: Sandra Mu/Getty Images)

Surely at least as a teenager I would be happy to get free fried chicken? Surprisingly, the answer to that question is no. Before I started working at KFC I was excited to get an endless supply of deep fried depravity. But now I have come to think that our food is just gross. Being made with that much oil seems off-putting. Particularly since I am the one cooking the chicken, so I see the oil dripping off.

Working at KFC has put me off our food, but I still break that rule sometimes. I’d never buy KFC anymore – I do eat it at work when I’m really hungry, but that’s it. Also, I think it’s bad that it’s company policy to throw out uneaten food at the end of the day. But fortunately my co-workers, who are yet to be put off by the grease, take the spare food home instead of feeding it to the rats.

The Spinoff asked me “What’s good about working at KFC?” That’s a dumb question – there is nothing good from my experience. To get a bit philosophical on you, I think working in fast food should be a last choice for everyone. But I acknowledge that to get by financially, some people must work at places like KFC. I’ve found that a lot of fast food staff are young people, like myself, who struggle to get better jobs. I want to quit KFC, but I have to pay the bills somehow, so for the time being I’ll stay put. Many more long 8:30am to 11:30pm days of school, followed by cooking chicken, await me.

– As told to Tommy de Silva